YNHH
YNHH healthcare providers get vaccinated as part of Phase 1A.
Yale New Haven Health is disseminating between 4,000 and 6,000 coronavirus vaccines in Connecticut and Rhode Island every week. Officials believe the hospital system could distribute eight times that number, if only they had the supply.
This past week, Chief Clinical Officer Tom Balcezak observed, the hospital system rescheduled its Monday and Tuesday vaccine appointments to later in the week, due to the snowstorm. On Wednesday and Thursday, Yale New Haven Health was able to dole out twice the usual number of vaccines per day without any hiccups, Balcezak reported.
He spoke at a YNHH Covid-19 briefing held online Friday afternoon.
“It shows how we could easily double — if not more — the amount of vaccines we are distributing,” Balcezak said. “We could be scaling to 40,000 doses per week.”
Thus far, the health system has vaccinated more than 40,000 people since Dec.15. Most of those vaccinated individuals are healthcare workers or emergency responders, while 15,000 are people who qualified because they are over the age of 75.
Nearly 67 percent of the health system’s employees have received at least one dose of the vaccine. The hospital system does not currently plan to mandate the vaccine for its own employees.
Currently, Yale New Haven Health is primarily distributing the Pfizer vaccine. Hospital officials are anticipating a potential FDA approval of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in the coming weeks, and will await federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance on distribution.
Recipients Disproportionately White
More than three-quarters of the health system’s vaccines have gone to white individuals, estimated YNHH Chief Executive Officer Marna Borgstrom (pictured at Friday’s update).
She and Balcezak said that around 10 percent of the vaccine recipients have been Black, 15 percent have been Hispanic or Latinx people, and under 10 percent have been Asian American.
“Even in New Haven, the majority of individuals are Caucasian,” Balcezak said. “That’s deeply distressing to us.”
These numbers are based on self-reported information from most patients.
Balcezak surmised that the hospital system’s disproportionate inoculation of white people is likely due to both a lack of access to vaccination sites (or the technology required to sign up for a vaccine) and a mistrust of the vaccine that has risen particularly in Black and Latinx communities.
Balcezak said the hospital system is considering providing in-person registration assistance for the first dose of the vaccine; it already helps first-dose recipients sign up for their second doses. Yale New Haven Health has also collaborated with NAACP representatives and church leaders to host informational town halls with experts on the vaccine. YNHH docs have been making the rounds of New Haven’s Community Management Team meetings as well.
“We tried to put all of our sites in areas with bus lines, in minority communities,” Balcezak added.
Yale New Haven Health’s overwhelmingly-white pool of vaccine recipients mirrors a national trend, even as — in New Haven and across the country — Black and Latinx people are far more likely to contract Covid-19.
Some counties and cities (including, at one point, Dallas) have proposed allocating more vaccines to people living in the ZIP codes most affected by Covid-19, which often include majority-Black and Brown neighborhoods.
Borgstrom and Balcezak shared other updates on the hospital’s efforts to fight the pandemic.
Currently, the health system is treating 317 Covid-19 inpatients across Connecticut and Rhode Island, a slight downturn from several weeks ago. Of those patients, 165 are in New Haven.
Balcezak said he expects the vaccine to contribute to a further decline in cases — particularly among the state’s elderly population — by March.
Fair Haven Health and Scott-Hill have actually been phoning their eligible patients. How much hesitancy have they encountered? From other sources, even when getting the vaccine is supper easy, such as when the vaccinators come to workplaces such as the skilled nursing facilities, staff often refuse vaccination. The anecdotal stories give reasons like "It's just too soon." Not everyone will understand the biochemistry behind the vaccines, or trust those who do. I am all for making the vaccine readily available to vulnerable populations, but for those who are hesitant, at the end of the day, it's their funeral.